Anyone else finding driving more stressful these days? Not sure if it’s perimenopause or all the pot holes

[Stuckinthemiddlewithyouuhoh]

But driving is actually starting to put me off going places

I read a report the other day that said in most council areas, the lack of money and staff, meant that when averaged out across the county, each indivdual road only gets repaired every 99 years!

Adding my name to the list of those complaining about the dazzling bright white LED headlights. They should be banned. I genuinely thought it was me getting old but both my DC (early 20s) have complained vehemently about them too.

I do a cross country drive every week and have no option but to do a long schlep on small country roads. In the winter those lights on those shitty roads are so dangerous, I do not know how there has not been more accidents. It takes every ounce of my concentration and effort to be able to see my side of the road when they come towards me, particularly when it is raining and all you get is bright white dazzle coming at you from every drop of water.

The other thing that pisses me off about them as well, is that they are usually on cars with "adaptive headlights" so they only slowly angle down and away as they come towards oncoming traffic, meaning that you get dazzled for even longer. GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm definitely more averse to driving these days than I ever was before.

I am retired and so no longer need to use the motorway for the very short journey to and from work and really I just drive locally now a radius of roughly 20 miles to account for some friends and the hospital that are a bit further out. If I do use the motorway, it's only a couple of junctions usually.

I think the huge rise in vehicles especially vans and people driving right in your exhaust pipe and speeding everywhere, is what has made me rather more nervous of the roads.

I recently reported potholes near my house on a very busy road, it is booked in for work to be done but in the meantime, it's about three times the width and depth than when I first reported it. For a cyclist or motorcyclist it could be fatal at night as they are not easy to see even in daylight.😡

Yes, I've loved driving for over 40 years, am a car enthusiast myself, taken the police driving course, been an advanced motorist observer, etc, done a few very long road trips around parts of the US and Canada (several k miles per time), driven over to mainland Europe many times, etc.

BUT, I'm starting to dread it and starting to go to fewer places these days, take much shorter journeys, and walk a lot more! There are attractions/towns I used to visit regularly but deliberately avoid now due to the state of the roads, poor driving standards, parking problems, congestion, never ending road works, etc.

I barely go out in the car at weekends because everywhere is too crowded, there are too many morons driving around who are either drunk, drugged or never passed a driving test.

My "World" is shrinking because I don't want to drive as much nor go as far as I used to. Unfortunately, public transport is utterly crap in our area too, with barely any buses on Sundays, trains often cancelled (Northern Rail land!) so are too unreliable especially for evenings and weekends when you can literally be stranded if they decide to cancel the last train/bus of the day, which happens too often, or don't even get where you want to go because they've cancelled the first bus/train of the day and the next is 2 hours later!!

Lack of planning/management is also a huge problem with inefficient local councils.

On the rare time they do decide to do a proper job of resurfacing, i.e. scraping off the old top surface and putting down two layers of new tarmac, it all seems to be a very inefficient long winded process. Last time they did it to my mother's road, where I went every day, it seemed to take a week to get the equipment in place, i.e. the scraper came first and was parked up several days, then a big dispenser/dropper kind of truck appeared and likewise parked a few days, then a road roller came. After a week or so, some actual workers appeared with lots of other trucks and equipment, and the actual scraping off the old surface was done in a couple of hours. Then a few days of nothing, and then another group of workers, trucks etc and the new tarmac was laid and rolled, again maybe only an hour for each layer. Then it took another week for all the equipment/trucks to be taken away again, again, one item at a time. The thing was that they literally only did half the road whereas the entire road was badly pot-holled. Given how little time they actually spent doing the scraping and relaying, they could probably have done the whole road within the same number of "working" days. Complete madness to literally do half a job when they had all the equipment on site for so long, and actually working for just a few hours.

Same with repairing pot holes. They make such a botch up, the "repair" usually disintegrates within a few weeks and then it needs doing again, and again.

With the scraping and resurfacing, surely it would make more sense to do "areas" at the same time which would mean less wasted time and wasted plant hire rental costs to move the machinery under it's own "steam" from one road to the next, rather than have it sitting around waiting for transporters and workers to move it from one end of town to the other, only for it to be moved back to the next street to where it was a few months ago.

Same with road sweepers. When I report blocked drains/slippery leaves on footpaths to the council, they eventually send a road sweeper machine, but they only do the exact patch I reported, even though it's blatantly obvious to the driver that the whole road needs sweeping or that there are other blocked drains within sight. Once I remember reporting one specific road, and then a couple of days later, I reported another adjacent road. The road sweeper came a few weeks later to clear the first road, but ignored the second, then it came back a few days later and did the second road! Doesn't sound a big problem, but our village is a few miles from the town where they're based, so it's not just a quick 5 minute job - it's an hour from their base, so a monumental waste of time. Surely someone in the council should be actually looking at all the reports and planning the work to do several reports at once rather than randomly sending them in all directions based only in order of the reports being received??

I still enjoy it, always have done, but it has definitely become harder work in recent years, especially at night, constant vigilance for potholes, dazzling lights, worn road markings, dirty signs, temporary traffic lights everywhere, huge SUVs parking next to you in car parks so you can only just get back into your car, smart motorways with their lack of hard shoulders and constantly changing speed limits.

I feel so much better reading this and I'm glad it's not just me. I've always been a very confident driver and would drive anywhere, doing very long trips when my parents were alive.

However now, while I do still drive, I prefer to use the bus mainly as driving is so stressful. I don't drive at night at all (apart from one night when our daughter was in labour!!!) as I also find the headlights dazzling.

Round our way - which is very rural - some drivers drive very dangerously, very fast, erratic, overtaking on bends and also right up your exhaust. Also their cars are often un-roadworthy with loud exhausts. Before we moved here someone who knows the area said the driving was like the wild west and he was absolutely right. But now bad driving is everywhere.

The state of the roads is appalling too - terrible surfaces and potholes. There is a dangerous pothole in the village on a very narrow but busy part of road out of the village which has wrecked someone's suspension and the Highways have deemed it not to be urgent for repair. Words fail!!!!

Ah so it sounds like a lot of this is the change from driving before and how the roads are now. But someone who learns to drive nowadays won’t know any different and will be used to them.

Pot holes, bright lights, and people just not giving a shit. I see so many people running red lights, or getting in the completely wrong lane so end up having to go across 3 lanes to get to the one they want. People using the hatched area on a motorway slip road because they missed the slip road initially so just go across the hatched bit. People not letting people merge in turn causing traffic to back up.

It's been like this since after covid.

I agree with so much of what has been mentioned. Blinding headlights, poor road markings, potholes, poor street lighting that makes it nearly impossible to see any road markings in the dark. People who don’t indicate, barge their way through and generally don’t give a shit about anyone else on the road. People completely in the wrong lane, but just swerve across the front of you, cutting across multiple lanes. Red lights are optional, as is giving way. E-bikers dressed fully in black, no lights, flying along at great speed. Then there are the speed demons who treat the roads as a race track. And god help you if you have to slow down to turn off a main road for a sharp or narrow side road, they are nearly in your boot.

People unaware of lane discipline on a multi-lane roundabout.

I would be very interested to know if accidents have gone up. So many of these things, like poor signage and vanishing road markings meaning that people get it wrong and make last minute lane switches, seem like they can’t help but cause accidents.
It used to be that the UK had a really impressively low number of road deaths, despite our population density. My prediction would be that we have tumbled down the road safety league but I would love to know if that is the case.

The pot holes around us are horrendous! DH recently had two tyres blown from one (road was flooded so pot hole was concealed) - thank goodness it wasn’t worse and no one was hurt. Makes me a bit angry though that the roads are in such a state as it’s dangerous.

Other drivers for me. All roads seem far busier, but that in itself isn't so much of a problem, but it means proportionately there are more bad drivers out there. Drivers who don't indicate at all or at the lat second, drivers who believe speed limits just don't apply to them and 35 is fine in a 30, drivers who don't have any insurance, drivers using non UK licences beyond their validity and generally drivers who don't have, and don't care to have, any interest in how what they do are affecting others around them.

The nett effect is that every journey, short or long is likely to be stressful. I used to love driving but when the time comes to stop I don't think I'll miss it.

Dazzling headlights that would be splendid deployed as military search lights but are fucking lethal when attached to a car. Meteor sized potholes, "enhanced" no doubt by the armoured tanks used to drive little Johnny to school. Add to that an explosion of tailgating and the many, many drivers who look as though they learned to drive in El Salvador.

LED headlights, crappy road surfaces and relentless tailgating when I’m driving at the speed limit. I used to love driving but most other road users are ignorant, selfish, and dangerous.

For me it's the potholes, I only have a small car, we used to use it quite a lot but use the large 4x4 now more as it copes with the roads better

Definitely agree that the bright lights coupled with astigmatism mean that sometimes I am on a hope and a prayer when driving in the dark that my road position is ok. It is definitely more stressful and over the winter I've been coming home early the days I'm working in the office and finishing off my hours at home, to minimise driving in the dark. Realise that I'm lucky to be able to do that though.

It’s neither it’s the other, mostly male idiots on the roads

I agree @Stuckinthemiddlewithyouuhoh, and im finding men so aggressive when driving too.

Pot holes
Super bright, blinding led lights
Roadworks
Standing water
Poor road markings
People not indicating
Cyclists without lights
20 mph limits when they aren't required
Multiplying CCTV cameras

bad yes this, "but they only do the exact patch I reported, even though it's blatantly obvious to the driver that the whole road needs sweeping or that there are other blocked drains within sight."

I told a council chap who was unblocking a drain that there was one 10 metres along that I've reported twice and needed doing, literally pointed at it. He still wouldn't do it as it wasn't on his job sheet and said I needed to report it again. Does my head in.

I don’t mind driving normally, but the last month has been more stressful than usual because of all the rain. It’s impossible to tell whether what looks like a puddle is just a puddle or a deep pothole.

Bright LED lights are also worse in the rain - even though I have special anti-glare glasses for night driving.

It is the potholes! They are everywhere....

I was driving just under 30mph at dusk the other day on a country B road and despite being focused on the road I only just saw a pedestrian walking at the edge of the road, wearing black and walking with their back to the traffic. I manage to swerve around them, bit of a shock. I think the pedestrian probably thought that because there was enough light to see where they were going as a walker that it meant they were easily visible. When I got to a junction where I had to wait for the lights to change I noticed no other cars were appearing behind me though there had been cars at a distance behind me. It turns out that one of the cars that came across him minutes later knocked the man down and that’s why no cars appeared behind me as they’d all stopped to deal with a severely injured man :(. I suppose the driver will get the blame.

Other than that it’s the same for me as others: bright lights - I believe some car manufacturers did not keep within the original guidelines (or rules, not sure which) for the brightness of lights. They are blinding and very dangerous. Potholes and disintegrating road edges meaning that vehicles drive towards the centre of the road and some fair large and busy country roads here in Kent have become effectively single carriage ways in places. This really doesn’t work at 50mph. There is a road near me were the road surface is so bad from years of neglect and ineffectual patching that there has now been two fatalities in the last two years, yet it still hasn’t been repaired.